The Printed Path

 Earlier in the summer(??!!) in bought this book on the basis of a review that I came across in the Guardian Review (Saturday - a great place to find all sorts of books). I have already read a great deal of Barnes' fiction starting a long time ago with Flaubert's Parrot. He is an avowed Francophile with an interest in the literature and art of France of the turn of 19th/ 20th century and this is manifest in this collection of essays which extends from Gericault to Braque, but including a side-order of Oldenburg, Freud and Hodgkin.
The essay that prompted me to write though concerns Félix Valloton (1865 - 1925) , a Swiss whom became assimilated into France. Here's just one example to start:

The Lie, oil on canvas, 1898

Valloton, despite not being French, became one of the  Les Nabis  a post impressionist avant-garde group which included Bonnard and Vuillard. Here I must declare interest in the the whole group that followed the Impressionists  such the Fauves and the Nabis have always intrigued me. Valloton, however, was unfamiliar to me. I had heard his name but would not have immediately recognised his work.

Now, after Barnes' essay - Valloton: The Foreign Nabi (Guardian, 2007) - and a followup on the imagery I cannot understand how I could have passed it - simply through its not being shown, I imagine. Here are some of his landscapes:

Sunset, oil on canvas, 1918 

Lake Leman, effect of evening, oil on canvas, 1900

Evening on the Loire, oil on canvas, 1923

La Grève Blanche, oil on canvas, 1913

Looking at these landscapes it is possible to see where contemporary Irish artists such as George Callaghan might have come from.

Valloton was extremely prolific and was also an accomplished portraitist:

Self-portrait, oil on canvas, 1914

Women with powder, oil on canvas, ?

The tones, the detail the flatness of the image all appeal and the approach is so different to the almost fantastical element that appears in the landscapes. When we move to his nude work which Barnes almost universally hated the same flatness can be observed:

African Woman, oil on canvas, 1911

The Abandoned Book, oil on canvas, ?

Admittedly,some of the other nudes are rather blocky an in others the influence of Ingres is rather painfully obvious; nonetheless,  I could see here where Lucian Freud might have come from both in the way of finishing faces and in the tone values used.

But here was the clincher for me:

These are example from a series of woodcuts called  Les Intimités. These are quite small but very intense in there use of large areas of undifferentiated black such as this one entitled Money:

 Equally the landscapes in woodcut are very dramatic: 

Prior to this wood had mainly been used as engraving for illustration but it would hardly be too dramatic to assert that Valloton changed the perception of the woodcut. This could be partly due to the infatuation with Japanese woodblock prints which had become very popular in France. There is evidence for this influence equally in the flat areas of colour used in many of his paintings and particularly The Lie with which we began.

Perhaps my enthusiasm for Valloton derives from my attachment to printmaking, but its not just that. I feel that Valloton has been unjustly neglected and I would advise first reading Barnes' essay , then seeking out the images foe oneself.

In passing I could also recommend Barnes' little book The Pedant in the Kitchen -a collection of his kitchen articles from the Guardian which are an absolute hoot.